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THE SYSTEM OF POLICE BRUTALITY

C.E. WILSON

THE GROWING mood of rebellion, evidenced by the nationwide spread
of ghetto uprisings, the loud, intense clamoring for decent treat-ment
as well as an end to dehumanization and degradation have
been triggered into action repeatedly by the action of the police dur-ing 
the recent revolts.  The trigger-happy behavior of the National
Guards and police departments, the haphazard system of mass arrests,
the exorbitant bails have only served to demonstrate clearly to black
people that the police, indeed the entire legal system, is both un-feeling
and unfailing in its brutality.  Police brutality in those inci-dents
is open, naked, unmasked reality.

But the core issue is not police brutality. This society has the clever
skill of mislabelling all issues in order that the basic contradictions
will be obscured, action will be deferred so that meaningless remedies
will be applied to basic ills. Police and supporters of the status quo
deny the charges of police brutality and customarily categorize a
charge of brutality as "alleged," a way of discrediting the claims.
Proven charges of brutality alone would be serious enough to under-mine
authority. 
For if the people trying to enforce the law are shown 
to be unjust or unfair, then the entire legal process is suspect. In
addition the unfairness of police casts the whole governing process
that both makes such laws and empowers the law officers to enforce
them.

Police brutality is merely a sign, a symptom as it were, of the core problem, the unequal administration of justice in an entire system

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C.E. Wilson is a New York writer whose last article in FREEDOMWAYS was American Investment in Portuguese Africa, Vol. 7, No. 3, Summer 1967.